Great pics. Awesome opportunity for you. I do have a question for you experienced "cut-outers." I notice in the close up pics that there is some old broken and abandoned comb in the lower left. On the other side of the stud from the colony. I saw that in a cutout this year too. Is that evidence of a previous colony that failed? In my case, there were a few more pieces of really old comb, and residue on the inside wall showing where a colony used to be. Then on the other side of the stud, was a large colony like the one shown. I'm thinking the parent colony failed at some point in the past, but a swarm took up in the next section of wall, perhaps from the original.

What do you guys think? Is that what we see in this pic????

Oh, now I see that above the old comb, you have some newer comb. Were they using that side too? Did you cut up that side and find more?

In this case I think you are right but in this case I ended up cutting the rest of that put and they had filled most of what is covered in the pics . It did seem there had been a previous colony there before though

"On the other side of the stud from the colony. I saw that in a cutout this year too. Is that evidence of a previous colony that failed? In my case, there were a few more pieces of really old comb, and residue on the inside wall showing where a colony used to be. Then on the other side of the stud, was a large colony like the one shown. I'm thinking the parent colony failed at some point in the past, but a swarm took up in the next section of wall, perhaps from the original.

What do you guys think? Is that what we see in this pic?Huh"

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Most likely, they started to expand into that area, but gave it up because of a too-narrow opening, or lack of ventilation. Or started during a heavy flow which came to an end and it was abandoned.

"On the other side of the stud from the colony. I saw that in a cutout this year too. Is that evidence of a previous colony that failed? In my case, there were a few more pieces of really old comb, and residue on the inside wall showing where a colony used to be. Then on the other side of the stud, was a large colony like the one shown. I'm thinking the parent colony failed at some point in the past, but a swarm took up in the next section of wall, perhaps from the original.

What do you guys think? Is that what we see in this pic?Huh"

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Most likely, they started to expand into that area, but gave it up because of a too-narrow opening, or lack of ventilation. Or started during a heavy flow which came to an end and it was abandoned.

Just my $ 0.02, for what its worth..........

Comb gets old and unusable even in feral hives. We don't see it a lot because it seems ferals don't survive for long periods of time in one spot. Here the oldest one I have ever found and you can see how the colony moved and abandoned comb over time.